Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

According to the received view in the philosophical literature on pictorial perception, when perceiving an object in a picture, we perceive both the picture’s surface and the depicted object, but the surface is only unconsciously represented. Furthermore, it is suggested, such unconscious representation does not need attention. This poses a crucial problem, as empirical research on visual attention shows that there can hardly be any visual representation, conscious or unconscious, without attention. Secondly, according to such a (...) received view, when looking at a picture aesthetically, one both consciously represents and visually attends to both the depicted object and the picture’s surface simultaneously. Thus, contra the empirical research on attention, only conscious visual representations are coupled, by such current view, with attention. And this clearly poses a second problem, as this philosophical account is not in tune with what vision science tells us about the functioning of our visual system. Furthermore, this raises another crucial problem, namely, that of explaining why aesthetic experience of pictures does not feel odd or conflicting, since, as previously noted in the philosophical literature, and contra the received view, if we are simultaneously consciously perceiving both the picture’s surface and the depicted object, there seems to be two things, at the same time, in the foreground of one’s visual consciousness. But, if so, as suggested, this would lead to a conflicting spatial visual experience. This paper offers a new description of the role of visual attention in picture perception, which explains the difference between the usual and the aesthetic way of perceiving a depicted object, without facing the problems reported above. A crucial role in our new account is played by the notion of unconscious attention, the distinction between focal and distributed, as well as top-down and bottom-up visual attention and the relationship between visual attention and visual consciousness. The paper, thus, offers the first theory concerning the exercise of visual attention in pictorial perception that is both philosophically rigorous and empirically reliable. (shrink)

Schizophrenia is associated with a series of visual perception impairments, which might impact on the patients’ every day life and be related to clinical symptoms. However, the heterogeneity of the visual disorders make it a challenge to understand both the mechanisms and the consequences of these impairments, i.e., the way patients experience the outer world. Based on earlier psychiatry literature, we argue that issues regarding time might shed a new light on the disorders observed in patients (...) with schizophrenia.We will briefly review the mechanisms involved in the sense of time continuity and clinical evidence that they are impaired in patients with schizophrenia.We will then summarize a recent experimental approach regarding the coding of time-event structure in time, namely the ability to discriminate between simultaneous and asynchronous events. The use of an original method of analysis allowed us to distinguish between explicit and implicit judgments of synchrony.We showed that for SOAs below 20ms neither patients nor controls fuse events in time. On the contrary subjects distinguish events at an implicit level even when judging them as synchronous. In addition, the implicit responses of patients and controls differ qualitatively. It is as if controls always put more weight on the last occurred event, whereas patients have a difficulty to follow events in time at an implicit level. In patients, there is a clear dissociation between results at short and large asynchronies, that suggest selective mechanisms for the implicit coding of time-event structure. These results might explain the disruption of the sense of time continuity in patients.We argue that this line of research might also help us to better understand the mechanisms of the visual impairments in patients and how they see their environment. (shrink)

We study the claim that multisensory environments are useful for visual learning because nonvisual percepts can be processed to produce error signals that people can use to adapt their visual systems. This hypothesis is motivated by a Bayesian network framework. The framework is useful because it ties together three observations that have appeared in the literature: (a) signals from nonvisual modalities can “teach” the visual system; (b) signals from nonvisual modalities can facilitate learning in the (...) class='Hi'>visual system; and (c) visual signals can become associated with (or be predicted by) signals from nonvisual modalities. Experimental data consistent with each of these observations are reviewed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.2 (2000) 175-188 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 38 Bioethics Resources on the Web * Once described as an "enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor" (Pool, Robert. 1994. Turning an Info-Glut into a Library. Science 266 (7 October): 20-22, p. 20), Internet resources now receive numerous levels of organization, from basic directory listings (...) to elaborate "links" (cross-references to other Internet documents) that flash and glow in the dark. In many ways, the Internet functions as a direct extension of the traditional library. Following linked references across various sites is an electronic version of browsing library stacks, and the serendipitous discoveries made while "surfing the Net" recall the wonders of physically going "book-to-book." Although many of the Internet's best aspects augment library strengths by eliminating physical distance from sources, Net resources pose unique problems for researchers. It is not always clear who is responsible for the content of Web documents, when the document was produced, or how often (if ever) it is updated. Internet resource tools, then, must enable researchers to identify appropriate resources and to evaluate what they find when they get there. Web Research as Taking "Snapshots" Given the Internet's visual nature and fluid content, the process of conducting research on the Web has been likened to taking an informal picture of information on a specific date at a particular time. This metaphor also conveys the "zoom-in" aspect of searching through Web pages by going from general to specific categories. In the first section of this Scope Note, National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) staff present a snapshot of bioethics resources taken during the spring months of 2000. Entries are divided into the categories of directories, electronic journals, full-text documents, news/current awareness, and teaching resources. In the two subsequent sections, this series of categories is repeated for entries on a specific topic within bioethics-genetics-and again for general search and evaluation tools. Where a Web site may contain pages applicable [End Page 175] to more than one category, multiple entries are made for that site with appropriate information for each category.Much as telecommunication advances have strengthened the relationship of patients and providers as partners, the dynamic nature of the Internet acknowledges that the researcher functions as a librarian whenever accessing the Web. It is our hope that BIOETHICSLINE and the other NRCBL databases not only will enable researchers to search the Web more efficiently, but also will help them to evaluate what they find when they get there. Bioethicsline on the Web: An International Plan in Progress Once only available through libraries, the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), the funding agency for the ongoing development of the BIOETHICS LINE® database from the Kennedy Institute, has provided free Web access to that database of 63,000 citations since September 1998 through Internet Grateful Med. Plans are now underway to eliminate such specialty databases and incorporate all citations into PubMed (for journal articles) or LOCATORplus (for book-like materials and chapters in books). Both of these databases are likewise available at no cost on the Web. In the transition to PubMed and LOCATORplus some features of BIOETHICSLINE that presently are available may be lost. Researchers are encouraged to contact the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature with search requests or for search strategy assistance with either the current or the future system ([email protected]).The inclusion of bioethics citations in PubMed and LOCATORplus will have several advantages. First, unique keywords from the Bioethics Thesaurus will be considered for inclusion in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the indexing vocabulary for PubMed and LOCATORplus, thereby enhancing retrieval of relevant clinical literature by offering more precise terminology covering ethical issues. Second, it will be easier to identify foreign-language materials, which are not currently included in the scope of BIOETHICSLINE. Third, the updating schedule will become more frequent. On the other hand, there may be some loss of searching precision because certain specialized features... (shrink)

Emotionally arousing events reach awareness more easily and evoke greater visual cortex activation than more mundane events. Recent studies have shown that they are also perceived more vividly and that emotionally enhanced perceptual vividness predicts memory vividness. We propose that affect-biased attention (ABA) – selective attention to emotionally salient events – is an endogenous attentional system tuned by an individual's history of reward and punishment. We present the Biased Attention via Norepinephrine (BANE) model, which unifies genetic, neuromodulatory, neural and (...) behavioural evidence to account for ABA. We review evidence supporting BANE's proposal that a key mechanism of ABA is locus coeruleus–norepinephrine (LC–NE) activity, which interacts with activity in hubs of affective salience networks to modulate visual cortex activation and heighten the subjective vividness of emotionally salient stimuli. We further review literature on biased competition and look at initial evidence for its potential as a neural mechanism behind ABA. We also review evidence supporting the role of the LC–NE system as a driving force of ABA. Finally, we review individual differences in ABA and memory including differences in sensitivity to stimulus category and valence. We focus on differences arising from a variant of the ADRA2b gene, which codes for the alpha2b adrenoreceptor as a way of investigating influences of NE availability on ABA in humans. (shrink)

We present an investigation into the relation between design princi- ples in Japanese gardens, and their associated perceptual effects. This leads to the realization that a set of design principles described in a Japanese gardening text by Shingen (1466), shows many parallels to the visual effects of perceptual grouping, studied by the Gestalt school of psychology. Guidelines for composition of rock clusters closely relate to perception of visual figure. Garden design elements are arranged into patterns that simplify (...) figure-ground segmentation, while seemingly balancing the visual salience of subparts and the global arrangement. Visual ‘ground’ is analyzed via medial axis transformation (MAT), often associated with shape perception in humans. MAT analysis reveals implicit structure in the visual ground of a quintessential rock garden design. The MAT structure enables formal com- parison of structure of figure and ground. They share some aesthetic qualities, with interesting differences. Both contain naturalistic asymmetric, self-similar, branching structures. While the branching pattern of the ground converges towards the viewer, that of the figure converges in the opposite direction. (shrink)

We present an investigation into the relation between design principles in Japanese gardens, and their associated perceptual effects. This leads to the realization that a set of design principles described in a Japanese gardening text by Shingen (1466), shows many parallels to the visual effects of perceptual grouping, studied by the Gestalt school of psychology. Guidelines for composition of rock clusters closely relate to perception of visual figure. Garden design elements are arranged into patterns that simplify figure-ground (...) segmentation, while seemingly balancing the visual salience of subparts and the global arrangement. Visual ‘ground’ is analyzed via medial axis transformation (MAT), often associated with shape perception in humans. MAT analysis reveals implicit structure in the visual ground of a quintessential rock garden design. The MAT structure enables formal comparison of structure of figure and ground. They share some aesthetic qualities, with interesting differences. Both contain naturalistic asymmetric, self-similar, branching structures. While the branching pattern of the ground converges towards the viewer, that of the figure converges in the opposite direction. (shrink)

Global era is an era of acculturation which may surface difficulties due to the tendency of becoming global chaos that may influence people’s thought. Everyonehas their own views and has made changes with their own worldview perception; hybrid and heterodox. Changes without wisdom will eliminate local elements.This phenomenon has influenced myriad forms of visual composition and architecture of Bali Madya dwelling. Balinese culture has gone through various changes since Rsi Markandeya in the 9th century, Empu Kuturan in the (...) 10th century and Danghyang Nirartha in the 14th century. They changed many dwelling arrangements in architecture. Changes do not mean that one has to demolish the local indigenous elements but, instead, should attempt to develop various indigenous elements with the intention that the visual interior and architectural compositions have their own distinctive characters. In relation to that, aesthetic image and traditional space concept will be arranged in various kinds of acculturation in global visual forms. The dwelling space of Bali Madya concept was acculturated from the Bali Aga’s space concept during the era of Majapahit. This research is based on aesthetic and historical approach that stressed on the artistic aspects and design that are associated with aesthetic appeal. The analysis was done using observations of form and function including the meaning of space composition which was arranged to produce a proportionate composition with local images. (shrink)

Global era is an era of acculturation which may surface difficulties due to the tendency of becoming global chaos that may influence people’s thought. Everyonehas their own views and has made changes with their own worldview perception; hybrid and heterodox. Changes without wisdom will eliminate local elements.This phenomenon has influenced myriad forms of visual composition and architecture of Bali Madya dwelling. Balinese culture has gone through various changes since Rsi Markandeya in the 9th century, Empu Kuturan in the (...) 10th century and Danghyang Nirartha in the 14th century. They changed many dwelling arrangements in architecture. Changes do not mean that one has to demolish the local indigenous elements but, instead, should attempt to develop various indigenous elements with the intention that the visual interior and architectural compositions have their own distinctive characters. In relation to that, aesthetic image and traditional space concept will be arranged in various kinds of acculturation in global visual forms. The dwelling space of Bali Madya concept was acculturated from the Bali Aga’s space concept during the era of Majapahit. This research is based on aesthetic and historical approach that stressed on the artistic aspects and design that are associated with aesthetic appeal. The analysis was done using observations of form and function including the meaning of space composition which was arranged to produce a proportionate composition with local images. (shrink)

The following dissertation shows how German Literature negotiates the relationship between language and the visual arts, particularly in Romantic narratives. In contrast with authors of the Enlightenment, the Romantics tend to deny specificity to visual experience and in so doing dedifferentiate visual experience from the textual. ;The initial, methodological, chapter explicates perceptual models informed by the interplay of the philosophical approaches of Kant and Wittgenstein with the psychoanalytic discourse of Freud. In Chapter Two, I turn to (...) Lessing's Laokoon Uder uber die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie , in which he divides the arts into pictoral and linguistic signs. While the boundary between the two appears quite clear in Laokoon, his play Emilia Galotti reveals Lessing's anxiety that the difference cannot be so easily maintained. ;The subsequent chapter explores the representation of the visual arts in Tieck's Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen . After a discussion of Wackenroder's Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders , 1 turn to Tieck's novel about a young student of Albrecht Durer. The novel responds to the ostensible binary between language and the visual arts by transmuting the distinction into one between readable landscape paintings and phantasmatic images that guide the protagonist. ;As another example of this Romantic viewpoint, I analyze Brentano's Godwi oder das steinerne Bild der Mutter . Here I use the distinction between symbol and allegory to point out the ways in which the text turns the difference between the arts into one between rhetorical figures. A similar manifestation of the problem occurs in Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild , discussed in Chapter Five. The novella follows the same lines as Lessing's Laokoon, thematizing the materiality of its eponymous marble statue. My final chapter concerns Kleist's model of visual perception, which is closely bound to his theology in his tales "Die heilige Cacilie" and "Der Findling" . ;Writing Images interprets the role of visuality in German Romantic literature in order to understand an unresolved problematic of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century thought for those who would too quickly either differentiate between or conflate the visual and the written. (shrink)

BackgroundIn Sweden, individuals with visual field loss have their driving license withdrawn. The literature clearly indicates that individuals with VFL are unsafe drivers on a group level. However, many drivers with VFL can be safe on an individual level. The literature also suggests that self-perception, beliefs, and insights of one’s own capabilities are related to driving performance. This study had three aims: To investigate self-perceived driving capability ratings for individuals with VFL; to compare these ratings between (...) groups with different medical conditions associated with VFL ; and to relate the self-perception ratings to actual driving performance in an advanced driving simulator.MethodsParticipants comprised 723 individuals whose driver’s license had been withdrawn because of VFL and 92 normally sighted elderly individuals. All participants completed a background survey, rated difficulties with different traffic situations, rated their strengths and weaknesses as drivers, and rated aspects that were important for causing traffic accidents. Of the VFL group participants, 264 also completed a simulator-based driving test that they knew could lead to renewal of their driving license. VFL participants and normally sighted was at the same age when they completed the simulator driving test.ResultsOverall, individuals with VFL rated their capabilities as high on all instruments and scales used, even higher than the elderly normally sighted control group. The only VFL etiology group that rated lower than other groups was the diabetes group. Safety orientation and internal control orientation values were best at discriminating between VFL participants in terms of self-perception of driving performance. Participants categorized as “high” in terms of safety skills and internal control were more modest in their ratings. Finally, participants who passed the simulated driving test did not differ from those who failed, in any of the self-perception measures.ConclusionSelf-perception ratings among individuals with VFL were higher than those of normally sighted elderly individuals. Self-assessed skills did not predict driving performance. Groups with different VFL etiologies rated similarly. Self-ratings of driving abilities cannot be used to assess actual driving performance. Actual driving tests are necessary to discriminate between safe and unsafe drivers with VFL. (shrink)

Understanding how activity in the brain leads to a subjective percept is of great interest to philosophers and neuroscientists alike. In the last years, neurophysiological experiments have approached this problem directly by measuring neural signals in animals as they experience well-defined visual percepts. Stimuli in these studies are often inherently ambiguous, and thus rely upon the subjective report, generally from trained monkeys, to provide a measure of perception. By correlating activity levels in the brain to this report, one (...) can speculate on the role of individual neurons and groups of neurons in the formation and maintenance of a particular percept. However, in order to draw valid conclusions from such experiments, it is critical that the responses accurately and reliably reflect what is perceived. For this reason, a number of behavioural paradigms have been developed to control and evaluate the truthfulness of responses from behaving animals. Here we describe several approaches to optimizing the reliability of a monkey's perceptual report, and argue that their combination provides an invaluable approach in the study of subjective visual perception. (shrink)

How space – mental, emotional, visual – is implicated in our constructions of reality and our art is the focus of this set of innovative essays. For the first time art theorists and historians, visual artists, literary critics and philosophers have come together to assay the problem of space both within conventional discipline boundaries and across them. What emerges is a stimulating discussion of the problem of embodied space and situated consciousness that will be of interest to the (...) general reader as well as specialists working in the fields of art history and art practice, literature, philosophy and education. (shrink)

Visual thinking -- visual imagination or perception of diagrams and symbol arrays, and mental operations on them -- is omnipresent in mathematics. Is this visual thinking merely a psychological aid, facilitating grasp of what is gathered by other means? Or does it also have epistemological functions, as a means of discovery, understanding, and even proof? By examining the many kinds of visual representation in mathematics and the diverse ways in which they are used, Marcus Giaquinto (...) argues that visual thinking in mathematics is rarely just a superfluous aid; it usually has epistemological value, often as a means of discovery. Drawing from philosophical work on the nature of concepts and from empirical studies of visual perception, mental imagery, and numerical cognition, Giaquinto explores a major source of our grasp of mathematics, using examples from basic geometry, arithmetic, algebra, and real analysis. He shows how we can discern abstract general truths by means of specific images, how synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, and how visual means can help us grasp abstract structures. Visual Thinking in Mathematics reopens the investigation of earlier thinkers from Plato to Kant into the nature and epistemology of an individual's basic mathematical beliefs and abilities, in the new light shed by the maturing cognitive sciences. Clear and concise throughout, it will appeal to scholars and students of philosophy, mathematics, and psychology, as well as anyone with an interest in mathematical thinking. (shrink)

An active engagement with arts in general and visual arts in particular has been hypothesized to yield beneficial effects beyond arts itself. So-called cognitive and socio-emotional “transfer” effects into other domains have been claimed. However, the empirical basis of these hopes is limited. This is partly due to a lack of experimental comparisons, theory-based designs, and objective measurements in the literature on transfer effects of arts education. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to design and experimentally (...) investigate a theory-based visual-arts education program for adolescents aged between 12 and 19 years. The program was delivered in a museum context in three sessions and was expected to yield specific and objectively measurable transfer effects. To conduct a randomized field trial, three strictly parallelized and standardized art courses were developed, all of which addressed the topic of portrait drawing. The courses mainly differed regarding their instructional focus, which was either on periods of art history, on the facial expression of emotions, or on the self-perception of a person in the context of different social roles. In the first and more “traditional” course portrait drawing was used to better understand how portraits looked like in former centuries. The two other courses were designed in a way that the artistic engagement in portrait drawing was interwoven with practicing socio-emotional skills, namely empathy and emotion recognition in one course and understanding complex self-concept structures in the other. We expected positive socio-emotional transfer effects in the two “psychological” courses. We used an animated morph task to measure emotion recognition performance and a self-concept task to measure the self-complexity of participants before and after all three courses. Results indicate that an instructional focus on drawing the facial expressions of emotions yields specific improvements in emotion recognition, whereas drawing persons in different social roles yields a higher level of self-complexity in the self-concept task. In contrast, no significant effects on socio-emotional skills were found in the course focussing on art history. Therefore, our study provides causal evidence that visual-arts programs situated in an art-museum context can advance socio-emotional skills, when designed properly. (shrink)

Perception is a first-person internal sensation induced within the nervous system at the time of arrival of sensory stimuli from objects in the environment. Lack of access to the first-person properties has limited viewing perception as an emergent property and it is currently being studied using third-person observed findings from various levels. One feasible approach to understand its mechanism is to build a hypothesis for the specific conditions and required circuit features of the nodal points where the mechanistic (...) operation of perception take place for one type of sensation in one species and to verify it for the presence of comparable circuit properties for perceiving a different sensation in a different species. The present work explains visual perception in mammalian nervous system from a first-person frame of reference and provides explanations for the homogeneity of perception of visual stimuli above flicker fusion frequency, the perception of objects at locations different from their actual position, the smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements, the perception of object borders, and perception of pressure phosphenes. Using results from temporal resolution studies and the known details of visual cortical circuitry, explanations are provided for (a) the perception of rapidly changing visual stimuli, (b) how the perception of objects occurs in the correct orientation even though, according to the third-person view, activity from the visual stimulus reaches the cortices in an inverted manner and (c) the functional significance of well-conserved columnar organization of the visual cortex. A comparable circuitry detected in a different nervous system in a remote species-the olfactory circuitry of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster-provides an opportunity to explore circuit functions using genetic manipulations, which, along with high-resolution microscopic techniques and lipid membrane interaction studies, will be able to verify the structure-function details of the presented mechanism of perception. (shrink)

Kant, Wittgenstein, and Husserl all held that visual awareness of objects requires visual awareness of the space in which the objects are located. There is a lively debate in the literature on spatial perception whether this view is undermined by the results of experiments on a Balint’s syndrome patient, known as RM. I argue that neither of two recent interpretations of these results is able to explain RM’s apparent ability to experience motion. I outline some ways (...) in which each interpretation may respond to this challenge, and suggest which way of meeting the challenge is preferable. I conclude that RM retains some awareness of the larger space surrounding the objects he sees. (shrink)

This book offers a new definition of metaphor-as an ontological and visual construction, whose roots are external visual forms, and its motivation is our attachment to forms. This definition, which Michalle Gal names “visualist,” challenges the ruling conceptualist theory of metaphors and places a new emphasis on how we experience rather than understand metaphors. In doing so, she responds to the visual turn that is taking place in literature and the media, demanding that the visual (...) become a site of philosophical analysis. This focus on the external visual world allows Gal to employ visual theories to capture the essence of metaphor. She looks beyond conceptual or semantic mechanism, and returns to theories of Arnheim and Gombrich and the current evolution of ideas about the visual or material and embodied cognition. Proposing to see visual metaphors in their basic form, she uses a new externalist terminology of ontology, visuality, composition, affordance, construction, and emergence. Setting out a new theory that takes into account that humans are visual no less than cognitive creatures, Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics lays the foundation for a new vocabulary to talk about metaphors. (shrink)

Perception is not an independent, in‐the‐moment event. Instead, perceiving involves integrating prior expectations with current observations. How does this ability develop from infancy through adulthood? We examined how prior visual experience shapes visual perception in infants, children, and adults. Using an identical task across age groups, we exposed participants to pairs of colorful stimuli and implicitly measured their ability to discriminate relative saturation levels. Results showed that adult participants were biased by previously experienced exemplars, and exhibited (...) weakened in‐the‐moment discrimination between different levels of saturation. In contrast, infants and children showed less influence of memory in their perception, and they actually outperformed adults in discriminating between current levels of saturation. Our findings suggest that as humans develop, their perception relies more on prior experience and less on current observation. (shrink)

Recent discussions in the philosophy of psychology have examined the use and legitimacy of such notions as “representation”, “content”, “computation”, and “inference” within a scientific psychology. While the resulting assessments have varied widely, ranging from outright rejection of some or all of these notions to full vindication of their use, there has been notable agreement on the considerations deemed relevant for making an assessment. The answer to the question of whether the notion of, say, representational content may be admitted into (...) a scientific psychology has often been made to hinge upon whether the notion can be squared with our “ordinary” or “folk” style of psychological explanation, with its alleged commitment to the idiom of beliefs and desires. In this article, I proceed the other way around, starting with experimental psychology itself and asking whether such notions as the above play a legitimate role within a particular area of contemporary theory, the psychology of perception. My conclusion will be that especially the first three have a legitimate place in theories of perception, albeit one that differs from that ascribed to them in a significant portion of the philosophical literature. Along the way I develop a notion of noncognitive functional analysis, which separates the notion of contentful perceptual processing and perceptual representation from cognitive or conceptual content. (This paper has been reprinted, with stylistic revisions, in Perception and Cognition, Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2009, pp. 50-87.). (shrink)

There is ample evidence from literature and clinical practice indicating mathematical difficulties in individuals with ADHD, even when there is no concomitant diagnosis of developmental dyscalculia. What factors underlie these difficulties is still an open question. Research on dyscalculia and neurotypical development suggests visual perception of numerosity (the number sense) as a building block for math learning. Participants with lower numerosity estimation thresholds (higher precision) are often those with higher math capabilities. Strangely, the role of numerosity (...) class='Hi'>perception in math skills in ADHD has been neglected, leaving open the question whether math difficulties in ADHD also originate from a deficitary visual number sense. In the current study we psychophysically measured numerosity thresholds and accuracy in a sample of children/adolescents with ADHD, but not concomitant dyscalculia (N = 20, 8–16 years). Math abilities were also measured by tasks indexing different mathematical competences. Numerosity performance and math scores were then compared to those obtained from an age-matched control group (N = 20). Bayesian statistics indicated no difference between ADHD and controls on numerosity perception, despite many of the symbolic math tasks being impaired in participants with ADHD. Moreover, the math deficits showed by the group with ADHD remained substantial even when numerosity thresholds were statistically regressed out. Overall, these results indicate that math difficulties in ADHD are unlikely to originate from an impaired visual number sense. (shrink)

Visual culture can be considered from semiotic point of view as a system of visual codes. Several of them have natural routs. So the perceptual code is formed already on biological level mediating translation of sensory data into perceptual images of the spatial world. The means of natural perceptual code are transformed in culture, where they are involved in communication by depictions. The depiction on the flat performs the function of a “perceptogram”, which, on one hand, is an (...) external record of an internal perceptual image or an idea, and, on the other hand, serves as a program for a spectator’s visual perception. The means of this “perceptography” form an artificial code, which is, on the contrary to the perceptual code, communicative, deliberately used and transformed in various ways at different periods of time in diverse kinds of practical and artistic activity. Not all perceptograms become pieces of art, but all history of pictorial arts can be considered as a process of development and mastering with the different versions of this perceptographic code. The changes of this code in visual culture are connected with the intrinsic development of “vision forms” as well with invention of external means of communication. (shrink)

Many of Margaret Cavendish’s criticisms of Thomas Hobbes in the Philosophical Letters (1664) relate to the disorder and damage that she holds would result if Hobbesian pressure were the cause of visual perception. In this paper, I argue that her “two men” thought experiment in Letter IV is aimed at a different goal: to show the explanatory potency of her account. First, I connect Cavendish’s view of visual perception as “patterning” to the “two men” thought experiment (...) in Letter IV. Second, I provide a potential reply on Hobbes’s behalf that appeals to physiological differences between perceivers’ sense organs, drawing upon Hobbes’s optics in De homine. Third, I argue that such a reply would misunderstand Cavendish’s objective of showing the limited explanatory resources available in understanding visual perception as pressing when compared to her view of visual perception as patterning. (shrink)

PurposeThis study investigated the impact of age and myopia on visual form perception among Chinese school-age children.MethodsThis cross-sectional study included 1,074 students with a mean age of 12.1 ± 4.7 years. The mean spherical equivalence refraction of the participants was −1.45 ± 2.07 D. All participants underwent distance visual acuity, refraction measurement and local and global visual form perception test including orientation, parallelism, collinearity, holes and color discrimination tasks.ResultsThe reaction times of emmetropes were slower than (...) those of myopic and high myopic groups on both local and global discrimination tasks. A reduction in reaction times was found with increasing age on both local and global discrimination tasks. Age was significantly associated with both local and global visual perception performance after adjusting for gender, visual acuity and SER.ConclusionsThis study revealed that both local and global visual perception improve with age among Chinese children and that myopes seem to have better visual perception than emmetropes. (shrink)

Visual culture can be considered from semiotic point of view as a system of visual codes. Several of them have natural routs. So the perceptual code is formed already on biological level mediating translation of sensory data into perceptual images of the spatial world. The means of natural perceptual code are transformed in culture, where they are involved in communication by depictions. The depiction on the flat performs the function of a “perceptogram”, which, on one hand, is an (...) external record of an internal perceptual image or an idea, and, on the other hand, serves as a program for a spectator’s visual perception. The means of this “perceptography” form an artificial code, which is, on the contrary to the perceptual code, communicative, deliberately used and transformed in various ways at different periods of time in diverse kinds of practical and artistic activity. Not all perceptograms become pieces of art, but all history of pictorial arts can be considered as a process of development and mastering with the different versions of this perceptographic code. The changes of this code in visual culture are connected with the intrinsic development of “vision forms” as well with invention of external means of communication. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.3 (2006) 92-114 [Access article in PDF] A Global Art System: An Exploration of Current Literature on Visual Culture, and a Glimpse at the Universal Promethean Principle—with Unintended Oedipal Consequences Art Education 11-18: Meaning, Purpose And Direction, edited by Richard Hickman; New York, Continuum; 2nd edition, 2004; 176 pp. Global Visual Culture within a Global Art System I have harbored misgivings (...) about the term "visual culture" for several years. Having read Hickman's book with its collection of notable scholars in art and design education, those misgivings turned into qualified acceptance of "visual culture"—so long as it is understood as a global visual culture within a global art system. The ten chapters presented in Hickman's book clearly explore the notion of visual culture in the context of generating an expansive and appropriate canon of art distinctly relevant to our postmodern, multicultural, multidimensional classroom of multiple intelligences.1 And so, art and design education for the twenty-first century must perform three essential functions: one, it must color the classroom with signs of global human pictorial and textual expressions; two, it must attempt to comprehend an immeasurable universe through creative, scaled-down explorations of the phenomenal world all of humanity is subject to; and three, it must open up the Blakeian doors of perception,2 while remaining free of emotional, educational, social, political, or religious ideological bonds. In this light, Hickman's Art Education 11-18 (2004), is a must read for art and design educators currently bogged down in old curriculum, and a must read for educators who incorporate new pedagogical literature easily into their new curriculum. And I say must read because we are on the verge of a revolution in visual art history and education—immersed in it, struggling to make sense of our beloved classical canon of art, and struggling to come to grips with a strangely foreign, beautifully alien, semeiotic reality we call (vaguely) "visual culture." It is a visual culture and history from the north, east, and south. Not just from the west.Key innovative educational issues addressed in these chapters are (respectively) using the dynamic nature of art to expand the curricula (Richard Hickman); the collapse of cultural borders (Lesley Burgess and Nicholas [End Page 92] Addison); a balanced cultural history of the world (Colin Grigg); recognizing art and recognizing visual culture (Howard Hollands); a range of visual cultures and literacy (Darren Newbury); using computer technology as a pathway to a new art and visual culture (Andy Ash); critical study and analysis (Michele Tallack); hand-making as a universal link to nature and art (Rachel Mason); spirituality in the process of art creation (James Hall); and cross-cultural heritage toward a new canon of art (Hickman).I will review each chapter as it pertains to current literature exploring popular pedagogical terms like "visual culture," "postmodernism," "pluralism," and "radicalism" and (more importantly) as it fits into a global system of art and culture. In addition, I suggest another term ("cosmopolitanism"—to identify the viable gay and lesbian aesthetic and culture) not that they are necessarily different, but they are indeed relevant and operate from a fresh literary and historical perspective. Then, I will illustrate how a new, postmodern canon of art must be linked to global visual culture and art in order to expand the concept of visual culture. Thus, I see two tasks before me: the first task is to inventory the philosophy, pedagogy, and meanings within each of the ten chapters in Hickman's Art Education 11-18; and the second task is to integrate key pedagogical ideas highlighted in each chapter as a method of generating a meaningful, holistic, integrated direction for art and design education in the twenty-first century. Integrating Art and Design Education Art is a design process. All subject regimes, D. N. Perkins suggests, are a design process.3 This may seem too obvious now after all these years since the publication of Knowledge... (shrink)

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the visual cortex can induce phosphenes as can non-diagnostic ultrasound, the latter while participants have closed their eyes during Stimulation. Here we sought to study potential alteration of a visual target (a white crosshair) due to application of diagnostic ultrasound to the visual cortex. We applied a randomized series of actual or sham diagnostic ultrasound to the visual cortex of healthy participants while they stared at a visual target, with the (...) ultrasound device placed where TMS elicited phosphenes. These participants observed percepts 7 out of 10 times, consisting of extra or extensions of lines relative to the original crosshair, and additional colors. Observation of a percept occurred an average of 53.7 +/- 2.6% of the time over the course of the experiment for these participants. In contrast, 7 out of 10 participants exposed to sham-only diagnostic ultrasound observed comparable percepts an average of 36.3 +/ 1.9% of the time, a statistically significant difference (p < 0.00001). Moreover, on average, participants exposed to a combination of sham and actual ultrasound reported a net increase of 47.9 percentage points in the likelihood that they would report a visual effect by the end of the experiment. Our experiment demonstrated that a random combination of sham-only and actual diagnostic ultrasound applied to the visual cortex of participants increased the likelihood that they would observe visual effects, but not the type of effects, with that likelihood increasing over the course of the experiment. From this we conclude that repeated exposures by diagnostic ultrasound made the visual cortex more responsive to stimulation of their visual cortex by the visual target. These observations, consistent with other’s observation of effects of diagnostic ultrasound stimulation of human motor cortex and amygdala, as well as the FDA approved nature of diagnostic ultrasound, may lead to increased study of diagnostic ultrasound applied to human brain. (shrink)

Vision is the main entrance for environmental input to the human brain. Even if vision is our most used sensory modality, its importance is not limited to environmental exploration. Rather it has strong links to motor competences, further extending to cognitive and social aspects of human life. These multifaceted relationships are particularly important in developmental age and become dramatically evident in presence of complex deficits originating from visual aberrancies. The present review summarizes the available neuropsychological evidence on the development (...) of visual competences, with a particular focus on the associated visuo-motor integration skills in health and disease. With the aim of supporting future research and interventional settings, the goal of the present review is to constitute a solid base to help the translation of neuropsychological hypotheses into straightforward empirical investigations and rehabilitation/training protocols. This approach will further increase the impact, ameliorate the acceptance, and ease the use and implementation of lab-derived intervention protocols in real-life situations. (shrink)

Quilty-Dunn et al.'s wide-ranging defense of the Language of Thought Hypothesis (LoTH) argues that vision traffics in abstract, structured representational formats. We agree: Vision, like language, is compositional – just as words compose into phrases, many visual representations contain discrete constituents that combine in systematic ways. Here, we amass evidence extending this proposal, and explore its implications for how vision interfaces with the rest of the mind.